AKMA’s Random Thoughts

Not to disrespect Max Cleland, but he blow himself up with a grenade in a non-combat mission. If you believe Ann Coulter, he was drinking alcohol at the time. I do not believe him a war hero because he could have done that in his back yard at home. I don't think that the campaign that lost him his seat was fair, because no one should be compared to Saddam Hussein or Bin Laden just because they voted against one bill.

AKMA, isn't that kind of "inside baseball" theological nitpicking?

Phil, for what it's worth, I don't believe Anne Coulter. Do you? If so, why?

Not a "kind of 'inside baseball' theological nitpicking" at all, Joe.

The relevant paragraph in the transcript of Max Cleland's speech reads:

The Bible tells me that no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends. John Kerry's fellow crewmates -- the men I am honored to share the stage with -- are living testimony to his leadership, his courage under fire, and his willingness to risk his life for his fellow Americans. There is no greater act of patriotism than that.

So it's more like a kind of "logical fallacy":

* the Bible (actually John 15:13) says "no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends"
* John Kerry was prepared to "risk his life for his fellow Americans"
* "there is no greater act of patriotism than [being willing to lay down one's life for one's friends]"
* inference = John Kerry is one of the greatest American patriots.

Except that Max Cleland associates patriotism with a willingness to risk one's life for one's military comrades whereas John 15:13 has nothing to do with patriotism nor courage under fire and, as AKMA correctly pointed out, Christ's "life and words describe an anti-patriotic critique of national idolatry, and a consistent pacifism."

As Margaret Adam suggests, Max Cleland has co-opted Christ's (anti-patriotic, pacifist) message for political purposes.

I'm afraid there is a failure of logic here, all right:

"* the Bible (actually John 15:13) says 'no greater love has a man than to lay down his life for his friends'"

:

"Except that ... John 15:13 has nothing to do with patriotism nor courage under fire..."

The would logically preclude friendship being related to both patriotism as well as courage under fire. A case could be made for either, so denying both is clearly in error.

Not that I've been under fire, except in a literary sense.

Margaret is too hard on you, Dr. AKMA. Or she is not recognizing your use of "Christ as pacifist" politically, one or the other.

As for who He was and is, I've not read all the 20 volumes of His actual (and presumably more-accurately-recorded-and-translated) words and those of the era, however, and don't know of anyone who has. Not sure that even reading all of them would be conclusive, in any current political context.. one side or t'other.

The post makes an excellent point; to apply Jesus' words to soldiering is a grave misconstrual of his meaning.

I wonder, though, if there is space in Jesus' words for a form of patriotism, even if the space has been closed by our modern association of patriotism with military endeavor.

Jesus certainly condemned the kind of national idolatry that encouraged his Jewish contemporaries to consider military revolt (or, in the case of the Maccabees and others, to actually carry it out). But Jesus was, in a way, articulating a kind of love for the nation that was neither idolatrous or violent--the kind of self-giving love that was exemplified in the sacrifice of his own life. (See also Caiaphas's prophetic comment in John 11:50-53--"You do not understand that it is better for you to have one man die for the people than to have the whole nation destroyed," an interpretation of Jesus' death with which John seems to agree.) Could we not call this, in some sense, "patriotism," but qualify it as a very different kind of patriotism from the one that Max Cleland and most hawkish American "patriots" would espouse?

If the Jesus who stood weeping over Jerusalem did not love his "countrymen" as friends, then it is hard to imagine what "love of country" is. What he demonstrated is that love of country--that love itself--is purest when it is peaceful.

Brief response from the road:

Thanks for all the feedback. Yes, Caleb, except that the whole category of “patriotism” oozes past the theological boundaries of “regard for the well-being of one’s friends and neighbors” on the trajectory of overt national idolatry. What is the state, after all, but a transpersonal abstraction of the personae of its citizens [and corporations]? And if that transpersonal persona attracts a more vivid loyalty than one would offer to the concrete personae of the citizens, we’re on a theologically dubious road.

Which is not to say Max Cleland or John Kerry is a deplorable person for thinking in these ways; it’s a very typical American response to a tension that the U.S. Constitutional tradition bequeaths to us. I don’t buy it.

OK, so that wasn’t quick. Thanks, Joseph, Jonathan, Caleb.

Agreed.

But why must the transpersonal abstraction attract a more vivid loyalty than the concrete personae? What I was suggesting about Jesus is that the two were never separate for him, nor are they really separated in Scripture. Israel is both the name of a man and the name of a people; the church is both a body and made up of bodies. Was Jesus, in practice, showing how to love a collectivity without effacing personality: how to have compassion on the crowds in a way that did not blur the faces in the crowd into one suprapersonal entity?

I may be splitting hairs here (not to mention being incredibly opaque). Let me reiterate, at least, that we completely agree that the "love of neighbors," as described by Jesus, is indifferent to nationality. Hence the heavy-handed emphasis on the fact that the Good Samaritan was a Samaritan. And in the John 11 passage, John goes on to gloss the high priest's prophesy by saying that "Jesus was about to die for the nation, and not for the nation only, but to gather into one the dispersed children of God."

Jesus' sacrificial love, then, was never "for the nation only." Patriotism, in the way you've described it and in the way Americans usually understand it (violent nationalism), is antithetical to everything he stood for. But isn't it startling, given that fact, that Jesus' death is described as being for the nation at all? Why not just say that he died for the world and be done? Why not stop with John 3:16 and leave 11:51 out?

One of the things about the story of Scripture that I consistently have trouble wrapping my head around is how YHWH chose to elect a peculiar people, to make a "great nation" of Abraham's seed, in order to eventually (in the person of Christ) explode the boundaries of that nation and dismiss the idea of nationality as theologically irrelevant.

Perhaps one answer is that love for strangers has to be learned from love for neighbors; the idea of gathering "into one the dispersed children of God" is so mind-boggling that it has to be approached first from the angle of love and death for the nation. To switch to contemporary and decidedly non-theological lingo, is the ideal cosmopolitan a former patriot, and the ideal patriot a cosmopolitan in training? I'm not sure I believe this, but thanks for letting me try it out.

I've clearly veered far away from your original post, and I apologize for the lengthy follow-up. I appreciated your reply! Best wishes for safe travel.

This would be another form of logical fallacy, Caleb. I'm not up on the terminology of debating and such, so don't know the correct term for it.

"Patriotism, in the way you've described it and in the way Americans usually understand it (violent nationalism), is antithetical to everything he stood for."

That would be one (wholly incomplete and insufficient, by my reckoning) definition of patriotism. In actual fact, MOST Americans know the definition of patriotism quite a bit better than that.

And while "Jesus, in practice, showing how to love a collectivity without effacing personality...", YHWH by any name is not a person deciding things. That may be a useful concept to hold on to at times, but this isn't one of them...;-D

Many have the fervent desire to explode the concepts of boundaries and nations and such.. as they sure do cause some problems while help avoiding other problems... And I held such dreams fondly, for example, reading Arthur as Sparrow in The Once and Future King decades ago. But there's a time and place aspect to absolutely everything (we perceive). The Apostles were sent to Africa and India and Asia, iirc, as well as among many Communities (Nations) in the region.

Logically, the Apostles wouldn't have been sent to nations if they didn't, in actual fact, exist. There are aspects of Christianity (or any Religion or Philosophy) that may over-arch the concepts of nations, but there's no advantage to ignoring reality as it exists, in any age.

Caleb, there are many things which make no sense, but Truth isn't one of them! There are many things that make no sense to even try to make sense outta, if you contemplate things "too much"... Learning about love comes from a number of sources, but the source is still from within.

It's trite to say you can only love somebody else to the extent you can love yourself, yet Truth. Love for self, or anything that can possibly be conceived by the mind/body, being almost indistinguishible from infatuation..

..Well, my understanding is that the Masters who consistently could tell the difference are far less than those who make the claim. Thaz about all I know about love.

Dr. AKMA, my reading of the Constantine Bible and The Gospel of Thomas (among other things) is that Christ was in no way a pacifist, but loved good and hated evil and could discriminate between the two.. and spoke and acted accordingly.

There being a time for every season, Christ turned a cheek at times, and at times most certainly did not.

Perhaps I write outta turn, because I am not a Christian nor particular Religious, however (and never claimed to be either a gentleman or a scholar...;-).

well, there *was* reason to exclude the gospel of thomas from the bible.. and we as christians don't really use it or the various other gospels to define christ as we use the biblical books, although they can be a fun read.

I recommend Elaine Pagels' The Gnostic Gospels, for some-a the background views on WHY some writings made the cut and some didn't, when Constantine decided to make Christianity central to his governance.

But then drastics cuts had already been made circa 180 AD (or CE or whatever).

There are copies of the Bible extant, for example, with The Shepherd of Hermas sown in as a fifth Gospel, but it didn't make the cut either.

But I do agree that there are REASONS the followers of such works were, quite literally, wiped off the face of the planet... As were the works themselves, for 1500 years.

The totality of this (what I would call) genocide, literally and of the literature, was SO complete that for 1500 years the only reason it was even known these works HAD existed was a few brief snippets found in early Church-leaders' condemnation of the works. Other than that, for 1500 years, these works were as vanished as could be.

The Gospel of Thomas, when I first read it, seemed crude.. but it is the aural pre-cursor to (some of) what eventually made it into the Bible. Less editing for political purposes, is my take... The parallels between it and the Bible are obvious, as are the non-parallels.

These things are more than just a fun read, nathaniel, as is any scripture if you choose look at them as more than just a fun read. In my experience, anyhoo...

(Btw, if Christ and Christianity are all about exploding the concepts of nations and boundaries, how come there's a Gospel of the Egyptians...?...;-)

JT, things just aren’t as simple and conspiratorial as you want to imagine — throwing around terms like “genocide” puts the least persuasive face on the complex series of events that resulted in the Christian canon of Scripture — but let’s call a ceasefire by saying that Pagels’s position represents one plausible assessment of early church history among various more or less well-grounded assessments. Moreover, her recounting of the canonization process isn’t strictly relevant to the ways the church interprets the books it does receive as canonical, even if her approach to that history were incontrovertible. The church has already opted not to receive non-canonical writings as authoritative for its reasoning. The church identifies Gnosticism as a theological error; if you cite Gnostic teachings to challenge the church’s teaching, it’s as though you were citing homoeopathic diagnosis to challenge a conventional medical course of treatment.

If you have reason to think Jesus taught a Way favorable to “patriotism,” put your cards on the table, as Caleb has.

Speaking of whom, Caleb, I’d argue that as soon as it becomes convenient or pertinent to invoke “patriotism” as a category more applicable to altruistic love than, oh, “altrusitic love” or “dsicpleship” or “integrity,” it sounds to me as though we’ve already displaced some of the allegiance owed only to God (and expressed in love of neighbors); to the extent that “patriotism” implicitly identifies the subject with some geo-cultural identity rather than the theo-cultural identity (if you will) of disciples, citizens of heaven (rather than of terreestrial realms) who are searching for a better polis, the City of God. But at this point, we may just be rehashing different angles on a disjunct controversy.

I think you're right: I agree with what you've said here. Perhaps our differences (if we really have them here) are simply semantic. I think I understand that you're trying to tell me that "patriotism" is so overdetermined by "geo-cultural," wordly, nationalistic, violent, etc., meanings, that it would be best to avoid imbuing it with any kind of theological meaning. And I think, the more I think about it, that you're right.

My only reason for trying to salvage the word was really for heuristic purposes: so that when someone like Cleland says that Christ exemplified patriotism, we can respond that his teachings were fundamentally different--that when he expressed love for his countrymen (as I still think he did, in a particularistic way), it was neither a love exclusive to them nor a love that legitimated violence against others. (A separate question running through our discussion, though, is whether a particularistic love for countrymen has to be exclusivist; could Jesus love Israel differently without loving non-Israel less? I'm simply claiming to wonder about this without staking my name to an answer.)

Maybe you'll disagree that we agree, but let me reiterate that I wholeheartedly concur with your criticism of the way that the "no greater love" verse has been used politically. I apologize if I've taken you on too much of a detour, but thanks for the exchange!